Et Tube? (Week 8)

YouTube is a huge playground, one I see a lot of kids playing on at the branch, not to mention all the embedded players in lots of blogs I visit. It can be a pretty useful tool, too. A cuople of months ago when I was all curious about what krumping looked like, bingo. Even a tutorial! and, as usual, librarians are all over this, with a ton of great library vids posted. Me, I like the silly, also as usual.

This first video is a fun little spoof about two librarians who formed a rock band:



And this little rant (and who hasn't wanted to go off like this once in a while?) is from my favourite movie, Party Girl. And doesn't Parker Posey look young? This flick needs a re-viewing sometime soon.



But what about more, um, practical uses? I think one thing that we provide that lots of people don't think of is our programming. Recording and posting some of our great author readings and visits, for example, could be a great way to communicate the kind of extras people can expect from us. This I think would be especially true of a teen audience, a group that could be reached easuily on youtube, where they live. Perhaps a YAG could put together a programme or a short movie for posting, for example. The tricky thing here will be with the permissions. We'd need to have the author's permission, but also either be careful about filming in such a way that we could either avoid needing other permissions or make clear what was happening and that it would be posted online. It's a little more problematic still with the idea of a YAG performing something - parental permission would likely be needed, but for regulars like YAG members, that might still be do-able.

Pod People

Podcasting is something I haven't used much because, frankly, I don't run around with a player any longer and I just don't have time for sitting around listening to stuff. I imagine that if you commuted in a car or listened to your iPod on the subway, this would be a great source of interesting material. Me, I read instead, so while I went and poked about, I haven't subscribed to anything (I hae quite enough in my bloglines as it is!). I noted a lot of talk shows, lots of politics, lots of tech talk, and piles of interviews with authors, and so on. As I say, interesting if you are likely to listen.

I have made podcasts at Odeo and imbedded a player in my blog before, which is fairly easy, but it would probably behoove me to get a better microphone before I start any bigger projects, because it was very faint.

I like the library's use of podcasting on kidspace for stories, and could see that it would work well for author talks, too, as a means of giving access to more people to hear them. I have missed a few that I might have made a point of listening to, for example, and I am certain I'm not alone.